BE
Threads

Service

The rare ones who come back down the mountain because someone is still in the valley.

Baba distinguishes the God-realized who remain absorbed from the Man-God who keeps a body in order to help. The Avatar is God become man; the Sadguru is man become God who does not forget the rest. Ram Dass spent decades as the latter in a human key: serving the dying, the imprisoned, the confused, himself included. Easwaran numbered it among eight points: putting others first, finding joy in helping, crossing the sea of the mind so the far shore can be of use. Macy’s last station is going forth — not as a hero, as a cell in a larger body that already knows how to heal. Myss would call it the contract you signed before you arrived. The modalities platform — hue man by hue man — is this thread made into a table. You do not have to be realized to set a cup down for someone. You only have to stop making the cup about you.

On this shelf

Titles that sit in this room. The books remain themselves.

Coming Back to Life / World as Lover, World as Self / A Wild Love for the World

Joanna Macy

From Contempt to Curiosity

Caitlin Walker

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

Alcoholics Anonymous

In this weather

Meher Baba

Those who stay

After God-realization, most souls drop all their bodies and remain eternally immersed in God-consciousness. For them, God is the only Reality, and the entire universe is a zero. A rare few God-realized souls not only possess God-consciousness but are also conscious of creation and their own bodies. They take active interest in the souls who are in bondage; and they use their own bodies consciously to work in creation, in order to help other souls in their Godward march. Such a God-realized soul is called Man-God, Perfect Master, Sadguru, Qutub. When man becomes God and retains creation-consciousness, he is called a Man-God; but when God becomes man, He is called the God-Man, or the Avatar. The God-Man and the Man-God never lose their God-consciousness even for an instant, although they may be engaged in all sorts of activities in relation to creation.

Discourses — The Man-God

Meher Baba

Not to teach but to awaken

I have come not to teach but to awaken. Understand therefore that I lay down no precepts. Throughout eternity I have laid down principles and precepts, but mankind has ignored them. No amount of rite, no amount of ceremony, can lead you to the path of spirituality. I repeat, I lay down no precepts. When I release the tide of Truth which I have come to give, men’s daily lives will be the living precept. The words I have not spoken will come to life in them.

Messages

Meher Baba

What is Love?

What is Love? To give and never to ask. What leads to this Love? Grace. What leads to this Grace? Grace is not cheaply bought. It is gained by being always ready to serve and reluctant to be served. Never backbiting. Tolerance supreme. Trying not to worry. Trying not to worry is almost impossible — so try. If you do one of these things perfectly, the rest must follow. Then Grace descends. Have Love — and when you have Love, the union with the Beloved is certain. True love is unconquerable and irresistible. It goes on gathering power and spreading until eventually it transforms everyone it touches.

Messages

Ram Dass

Walking each other home

We’re all just walking each other home. The sentence does not require you to be further along than the person beside you. It does not require a teaching credential. It requires company. The dying taught him this. The stroke taught him this. The years of being the one who still showed up taught him this. Home is not a location you drag another person toward. Home is the quality of how you walk.

Talks

Caroline Myss

The contract

A sacred contract is the assignment you arrived with — the archetypes who walk with you as gatekeepers of a higher purpose. The wound is not proof that the contract failed. The wound is often the seal. You do not have to like the terms to live them with eyes open. Naming the pattern is already a retrieval of power. Then the body can stop carrying the whole myth alone.

Sacred Contracts

Joanna Macy

Active hope is something we do

Active Hope is not a feeling you wait to have. It is something we do. It involves being clear what we hope for and then playing our role in the process of moving that way. It is how we face the mess we are in without going crazy — and without going numb, which is another kind of crazy. You do not need optimism. You need a direction and a next step that belongs to life.

Active Hope

Joanna Macy

The spiral

The spiral returns: Coming from Gratitude. Honoring Our Pain for the World. Seeing with New Eyes. Going Forth. When we come from gratitude, we become more present to the wonder of being alive in this amazing living world. Honoring pain is not collapse. It is refusing to exile the part of you that loves enough to hurt. Seeing with new eyes is remembering you are larger than the story of isolation. Going forth is the cell doing what the body already knows.

The Work That Reconnects

Joanna Macy

The Great Turning

The Great Turning is the name for the shift from an industrial-growth society toward a life-sustaining civilization. It is already underway, in more kitchens and watersheds than the news can count. A regenerative homestead, a food forest, a community that tells the truth about its grief — these are not accessories to a spiritual life. They are the spiritual life, remembering it has hands.

Active Hope

Grandfather

We are the caretakers

Nature becomes a doorway to the spirit and spirit also becomes a doorway to nature. There is only the sacred oneness that we are all part of. When we take something from nature, its spirit does not die. Instead it becomes part of our flesh and part of our spirit. There is no real death, at least not when things are taken in the right way, the sacred way. You belong to the earth, just as you are part of this old tree and it of you. Nature can exist without us, but it would struggle far more. Remember, we are here for a grand purpose, beyond self. We are the caretakers.

Grandfather

Grandfather

Peace, love, joy, purpose

The four things people really work for in life: peace, love, joy, and a purpose beyond self. Peace becomes a doorway to joy. When we know our purpose in service to others and the world around us, our sense of peace and joy grows. We settle into ourselves and our personal gifts come forth. Our capacity for offering and receiving love grows with this as well. The herd does not ask you to manufacture these. It asks you to tend them, the way you would a fire you did not light.

Grandfather

Tom Brown Jr.

I am a coyote teacher

To give instruction would satisfy the needs of most people, but that is not my goal. My goal is to give the reader a picture of the world we live in, the forgotten world. This book explains that it is not easily come by and a search for the truths must occur before knowledge is attained. Grandfather’s life was full of every emotion, every feeling, and they did not come from listening to his elders. He had to seek them out for himself as I wish the reader to do. I am a coyote teacher. The fire still burns. Someday people will seek again the old ways.

Grandfather

Jon Young

Ten stones of agreement

Welcoming into the container. Wiping off road dust — what is keeping me from being fully present. Gratitude, to bring hearts into resonance. Unconditional listening, as you would listen in nature. A culture of allowance. Lifting up the gifts in others and ourselves. Supporting peace, love, joy, and purpose. Facilitation so even the quiet voices arrive. Mentoring, curiosity, and inner vision. Wrapping the bundle and closing, so nothing unfinished walks home with you. The stones work together. There is no one right way. Nature is a common context.

10 Stones Protocols for Sharing

Jon Young

Wrapping the bundle

Just as the first stone opens the container, the tenth remembers to close it. Wrap the bundle: what were the takeaways? Any final reflections? What are you grateful for? Intentional closing lets people cleanly separate mind, heart, and intent from the group mind, so nothing unfinished walks home. We move forward with a fresh start, still holding the feeling of belonging. The baby elephant knows this in the body. The walk ends. The herd remains.

10 Stones Protocols for Sharing

Michael Singer

Get out of the way

What would happen if I let go of my resistance to life? The experiment was simple, and it was not safe: say yes to what arrived, and watch what the universe would do with a life that stopped arguing. Surrender is not passivity. It is the end of using the mind as a wall. Each time the roommate said no, he practiced the opening. The life that grew was larger than the one he had been trying to manage.

The Surrender Experiment

Eknath Easwaran

Putting others first

We all need joy, and we can all receive joy in only one way, by adding to the joy of others. Putting others first is not a slogan and not a loss. It is how the fist of I opens. The eight points walk together: a passage in the morning while the day is still cool; a mantram whenever the trunk starts to wander; slowing down; one-pointed attention to the matter at hand; training the senses; spiritual fellowship; spiritual reading; and this — freedom from the small self, joy in helping, the far shore used for someone still in the water. In living for others, I come to life.

Passage Meditation